From the New Yorker, a medical doctor asks Heidi Larson: “The world’s richest countries are now its most vaccine-hesitant. Can we learn to trust our shots before the next pandemic?”:
… Larson, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, studies vaccine rumors—how they start, and why some flourish and others wither. Public-health experts often address vaccine hesitancy on an informational basis, by debunking rumors and misinformation. But, in her recent book, “Stuck: How Vaccine Rumors Start—and Why They Don’t Go Away,” Larson argues for a more expansive view of the problem. “We should look at rumors as an eco-system, not unlike a microbiome,” she writes. Tackling misperceptions individually is like eliminating a single microbial strain: when one germ is gone, another will bloom. Instead, the entire ecosystem must be rehabilitated.
In 2010, in London, Larson founded the Vaccine Confidence Project, with the goal of putting these ideas into practice. Its analysts—trained in digital media, political science, artificial intelligence, psychology, statistics, epidemiology, and computer science—monitor news sites and social media in more than a hundred languages, then strategize with local health groups about how to tackle the rumors they find. Larson describes the Vaccine Confidence Project as “investigating the global vaccine weather, while zooming in to local storms.” This year, the project has fielded requests for help from health officials in some fifty countries, including, in the few days before one of our phone calls, Sudan, Somalia, Turkey, and Iran. Her team works in an epidemiological spirit, hoping to contain outbreaks of misinformation swiftly, before they can spread.
Larson has also developed a tool for quantitatively mapping vaccine hesitancy: the Vaccine Confidence Index, a set of validated questions concise enough to reach vast populations. In 2015, she posed the questions to sixty-six thousand people in sixty-seven countries—the first time a rigorous survey of vaccine attitudes had been conducted at that scale. Larson’s results took many public-health experts by surprise. The lowest levels of vaccine confidence were found in countries with the highest education levels and the best health-care systems; seven of the ten most vaccine-hesitant countries were within the European Union. (France ranked first.) Global-health efforts tend to focus on poorer countries such as Nigeria, but the results suggested that the ability of vaccines to end pandemics might also be weak in wealthier countries—the same nations that export public-health expertise to the developing world…
Larson, who is sixty-four, has a calming, meditative demeanor that masks a restless intellect. Willowy, with no-nonsense straight hair, she has spent the coronavirus pandemic tracking vaccine attitudes from the home in North London she shares with her husband, the Belgian microbiologist Peter Piot, who helped discover and contain Ebola. Larson and Piot share a vast repository of global-health experience; in March, 2020, they shared the coronavirus. She experienced mild symptoms, but Piot fell seriously ill.
Over a video call this spring, Larson told me that the COVID vaccination effort “should remind everybody that you cannot have scientific advances and great global-health plans” without taking vaccine confidence into account. Five months into the vaccination effort, the share of the U.S. population who’ve received at least one dose of the vaccine has barely exceeded fifty per cent. After reaching a peak of more than four million doses per day in mid-April, the daily number of doses has been falling off, slipping under a million per day in June. Herd immunity through vaccination seems increasingly unlikely. But Larson is already thinking ahead to the next pandemic. Future outbreaks may well be deadlier and more contagious than COVID-19. What good will our high-tech vaccines be if not enough people will take them?…
Larson told me that she had been impressed by the work of the Black Coalition Against COVID-19, a group of health professionals based in Washington, D.C., and directed me to its Web site. The site doesn’t lecture visitors about personal responsibility or bombard them with data and links to vaccine-appointment hubs. Instead, it centers on a video titled “A Love Letter to the Black Community,” which showcases Black health-care workers and researchers involved in fighting the coronavirus. “We have locked arms in an initiative to place the health and safety of our community at the heart of the national conversation about COVID-19,” a narrator says. The video acknowledges that the medical system needs to earn the trust of Black Americans; only then does it address masks, social distancing, and vaccination. In the site’s menu, a tab for “Remembrance” is adjacent to the one for “Vaccines,” putting community grief on an equal footing with vaccine education…
… I asked Larson how she would structure the vaccine response for the next pandemic. “Make sure that the vaccine effort is embedded in the over-all pandemic effort, not a stand-alone measure,” she said. The head of the vaccine effort should be appointed on Day One, even before the research starts. Vaccines “always seem so far in the future,” she said, but planning and communications need to start immediately…
From the beginning, Larson said, national leaders should explain that vaccine development is “an evolving story,” and help the public acclimate to the inevitable scientific shifts. Her vaccine team would include not just vaccine and public-health experts but people who work in global health and diplomacy, to anticipate the need for international coördination. Communicators with expertise in explaining risk and ambiguity would be essential team members, Larson said; so would tech-savvy young people, not unlike the analysts at the Vaccine Confidence Project, who could monitor online rumors and vaccine discourse. Larson would also convene a board of trusted public figures—she hesitates to call them “influencers”—who could serve as vaccine emissaries. She imagines a dozen or so well-known individuals from the worlds of music, television, sports, and religion, as well as from underrepresented communities. They would be regularly briefed by the pandemic-response team and also have the opportunity to ask questions, perhaps on television or a social-media live stream. The approach would also extend to businesses, schools, service agencies, and nonprofits. “We need high-level cohesion,” Larson said.
The idea that our health-care success might hinge on the future equivalents of Morgan Freeman, Rick Warren, Taylor Swift, and LeBron James—plus the odd TikToker and video-game streamer—can feel unsettling. For Larson, it’s simply another link in the trust chain. She added that her hypothetical vaccine-response team would draw up contingency plans that would not be “dependent on higher-level leadership.” States, she argued, should be more explicitly prepared to handle pandemic response and vaccination strategy, should there be another President unable or unwilling to lead…
Related argument, from a “Behavioral Scientist… Studying disinformation, health, & your brain”:
Anti-vaxxers aren’t anti-vaxxers because they’re stupid. Some are in it for the money (the prominent ones, at least); others for ideological or religious reasons, or due to deep mistrust of medical institutions. People want to believe they’re just dumb, but that’s not correct.
— Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D (@RVAwonk) June 9, 2021
If we have any hope of reaching those who are skeptical of vaccines (not all are hardened anti-vaxxers), we have to actually understand what & who we’re dealing with. In most cases, it’s not a knowledge deficit or a lack of intelligence; it’s complex, interwoven belief systems…
There exists a multi-million dollar anti-vaccine propaganda industry that targets people’s beliefs, fears & vulnerabilities. The most recent product of this industry is RFK’s new film targeting African Americans by exploiting their very justified distrust of medical institutions…
More broadly, there’s no evidence that anti-vaxxers are lacking in information or are any less educated than the general public. In fact, many of them spend a huge amount of time consuming information online — just not usually good information.https://t.co/JqKiuA9fmD pic.twitter.com/jzUWB7v89Y
— Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D (@RVAwonk) June 9, 2021
We also know that negative emotions like fear and anxiety narrow your attention, and that fear of an immediate threat (even one that's not real) creates a sort of tunnel vision that can limit a person’s ability to think critically. https://t.co/bQxlAOgC9a
— Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D (@RVAwonk) June 9, 2021
…
And I should add that I totally get the anger towards the anti-vaccine crowd, and I share in it. But save that anger for the leaders and the funders of the movement, and don’t conflate the victims of propaganda with the creators of it.
— Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D (@RVAwonk) June 9, 2021
debbie
I don’t know, maybe locating and disabling the gene that encourages people to manipulate and take advantage of others would be a help.
Matt
Just because the lies are complicated doesn’t make them any less stupid. Just because everyone a person knows believes them doesn’t make them any less stupid either.
The book of Genesis has plenty of twists and turns, but if you read it and think the Earth was created in six days and is flat – you’re still a gullible dumbfuck. I don’t care how many people share your “complex belief”, it’s still nonsense.
There are 12 people responsible for most of the vaccine misinformation on Facebook. This is not a problem of “complex beliefs”, this is a deliberate propaganda problem.
Ruckus
I get why countries with wider educational conditions could be more vaccine hesitant. People have 2 sides, mental and emotional. And with higher educational countries, people began to believe that they are smarter than they actually are, they think they know more and can understand more. We began to think we know more about things we know little to nothing about. So when someone tells us we should take a vaccine, we question the rational of that. If your thought process is specific disease bad, take specific vaccine, you will. If your thought process is that you know everything, you do a risk analysis, but just likely a crappy one, because you have a lot of knowledge. RFK is a highly educated person, just not smart in effective ways, his education makes him think he knows more than actual experts in a field. And he obviously doesn’t.
germy
geg6
Read an article yesterday (I think it was on Salon or GOS but not sure) about one theory of vaccine hesitancy is about when fear of needles, and thus vaccines, develops. The theory is that most people were happy to get vaccines (if not thrilled) because childhood vaccines used to be given mostly when people were infants or toddlers but that changed when boosters were developed and were given to 5-6-7 year-olds, often all in one visit. Many children and young adults cite that as a triggering factor and, apparently, that is the age when many of the phobias we deal with through our lives develop. I thought it was interesting because I was one who entered school before the boosters were available and don’t have a big phobia about needles. I’ve had boosters since but I was much older than that vulnerable age for phobia development. I think this may explain some of it.
Starfish
A lot of things are lumped into vaccine hesitancy. For example, people who do not have access because they have no transportation and no nearby vaccine locations are lumped in as vaccine hesitant. People who are afraid of surprise medical billing and unknowable medical prices are lumped in the category of vaccine hesitant.
The way that US insurance has guided how much time doctors spend with patients has eroded any relationships that people can build with their doctors. That single 45 minute annual appointment is not what trusting relationships are built on.
The success of vaccines and the fact that people do not know other people with vaccine-preventable diseases has made people question the seriousness of the diseases that vaccines prevent. Just because a lot of people do not know someone who used an iron lung, was in a wheelchair, etc. due to polio, they may discount how dangerous it was.
debbie
@geg6:
I was one of those children. Polio and booster shots every f’ing year. Needles terrified me. I bit the dentist when he said he was going to stick a needle in my mouth. I just about fainted when I was told I was having my blood taken. For a few years, I twisted myself farther than Linda Blair when getting a shot or a blood test.
After enduring many, many blood tests, I still don’t like needles and I feel my heart racing a bit as the moment approaches, but that hasn’t stopped me. Now, if I could just get past dreading side effects…
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@germy:
Those suburban/exurban McMansions don’t build themselves. They need the money and desires of credulous (mostly) white people to be built.
opiejeanne
I don’t get why that doesn’t translate to fear of the immediate threat of the very real Corona virus.
Ruckus
@debbie:
Survival of the most evil is bad? I mean I understood that making buck off of susceptible people is the American way. Likely not limited to Americans. I call it survival of the most evil. Look through history, they are the ones who hang around longer, surviving starvation, plague and pestilence by aiming it at others. We in theory now know how to overcome those fairly well, not 100% but pretty good, but some people just seem to like the old way of throwing bodies in front of themselves as a wall of humanity protecting them from things harmful and not. Take racism, please.
opiejeanne
@geg6: My first polio shot was when I was 5 or 6, and I have a lifelong terrible fear of needles.
I have overcome the fear enough to get a flu shot every year and can even give myself injections (diabetes 2). This latter makes me stupidly proud for some reason.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Starfish:
I’m one of those people who see the notion of “having a relationship with my doctor” as a ridiculous concept rooted in white privilege. It’s a fungible service and for the most part, 9 of 10 will offer the same level of skill and knowledge on diagnosis and treatment.
Frankly, from where I sit, the place where people face misdiagnosis and poor care is more often with the doctor they’ve known for 30 years and therefore is trusted to not be an idiot.
I don’t want them to be my friend and confidante. I want them to give me a service and do it well in exchange for money. They ain’t that special.
germy
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Those McMansions are flimsy, just like Tenpenny’s ethics.
germy
@opiejeanne:
You should be proud. How many people overcome phobias?
I’ve had a lifelong fear of heights. You know how I deal with it? Avoidance.
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie:
You mean eugenics? That will never end badly.
debbie
@opiejeanne:
You should absolutely be proud. I could never do that.
debbie
@Omnes Omnibus:
Nope. It’s no different than trying to find the genetic bits that cause cancer and coming up with a way to alter them.
Kirk Spencer
@opiejeanne:
Because the very real Corona virus isn’t immediate to them. People they trusted said it wasn’t a problem. People they wanted to believe said so. People they had reason to mistrust were involved. For example, the history of the US government supporting and conducting medical experiments on various groups (not just one) while claiming they weren’t or “it’s experimental but it’s fine, it’s safe” raises a barrier to trust.
Note – my spouse and I have both shots and didn’t hesitate. Doesn’t mean I don’t understand the hesitancy.
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: Run me through how it’s not eugenics again?
Roger Moore
The thing I’ve noticed is that there’s a strong connection between anti-vax and and natural living crowds. The same people who claim vaccines give you autism also say they weaken your immune system and you just need to engage in healthy living practices- eating right, exercising, etc. to avoid getting sick. They’ve constructed a whole alternative health theory, and once someone starts buying into it, it’s very easy to accept the rest. This is a big problem, because they’ve taken just enough true, well supported stuff- a lot of the healthy living stuff they’re advocating really does improve your general wellbeing- that it’s very effective in sucking people in.
Ruckus
@geg6:
I don’t like needles because I don’t like getting stuck with them. I don’t think they are evil or trying to kill me, but I’ve been hospitalized from vaccines given with shots and pneumatic guns. I also work in a field that exposes me to small slivers of metal that can, and do, get embedded in skin and have to be pulled/dug out – metal machining. I’ve been stuck far more often at work than by doctors. But I still go to both because in the end the medicine and the money are worth the risk. I know this because I know people with diseases that got them before the vaccines were developed. Polio (others), measles (me and everyone else I knew back then, and I had one of the main side effects- encephalitis), etc.
I do feel for those with needle phobia, often those things hurt like hell. And being hurt as a kid, by people who are supposed to protect you seems backasswards, like spare the rod, spoil the child backasswards.
debbie
@Omnes Omnibus:
It’s not forced abortion or sterilization. It’s not disappearing a group of people because they’re inferior or less desirable. It’s not at all the same thing.
Percysowner
@geg6: When I was 3-4 I was diagnosed with allergies. Back then allergy shots were used all the time. I remember going to the doctor 4 days a week for shots. It became so much a part of my routine, that they don’t bother me. I guess getting them before phobias could start in was a blessing.
Ruckus
@opiejeanne:
You lived through having diseases with no vaccines. Were sick, know people who were sicker. A person born in the last 40 or so years very likely doesn’t have that experience. They didn’t see up close and personal, say polio. They don’t get the very real costs. Even driving a car is a lot safer than it was when we learned to drive. And there are a lot more cars, being driven by people who’ve likely not seen what you have. A lot of people drink less so there is less being run into by a drunk, as well there are a lot more other targets. Your chances are a lot better. Then Covid. Without intervention, a hell of a lot more than 600,000 people would be dead. Think India.
Ksmiami
@Omnes Omnibus: not by a long shot. If people are willfully anti-science/death cultish, there isn’t much you can do- that said mobile vaccination units administered by people of color in their communities can be very effective at helping vulnerable populations. MAGA jerks have made their beds on the other hand
Roger Moore
@opiejeanne:
Because COVID isn’t an immediate threat. It’s a near-term threat, but it doesn’t have the immediacy of the fear of needles.
Starfish
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I am the child of a doctor who practices medicine in an area where a lot of her patients were poor white and likely racist folks. Seeing medical care as an exchange of something for services is rooted in a capitalism that is built on white privilege.
The people who want to go to a medical boutique where the doctor spends a lot of time with them, the nurses are not fat, etc. That nonsense is also rooted in white privilege.
Some people have to convince every new doctor that they are not drug seekers and that their diagnoses are real because doctors refuse to listen to them about their conditions.
MattF
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I think you’re on to something there. Physicians typically treat several hundreds of people in a year and discard the information about any given individual after a few years. Getting a ‘good’ doctor is just the luck of the draw, and we are regularly bombarded with tales of medical errors and misdiagnosis. Vaccines are an element of the ‘standard of care’, which is actually a rather weak reed, and doesn’t inspire trust.
Sister Golden Bear
I suspect one factor in the richest and the poorest countries is that our success at preventing infectious diseases in general — not just ones via vaccination — have made us complacent. When’s the last time there was a major typhoid epidemic in the U.S.?
People in the poorest countries deal with outbreaks of Ebola, Yellow Fever, measles, Dengue Fever, cholera, etc. So they’re probably far less disinclined to be hesitant about things that may cure/prevent them, as well as other diseases.
mrmoshpotato
On a related note, ElectroBOOM is here to call you a magnetic moron.
Ruckus
@Starfish:
I had a friend like that. She had Sickle Cell disease. She had to go to one hospital and speak to someone that knew her to get admitted when she had an attack. Otherwise she was always seen as looking for drugs. And she didn’t use at all. She passed 4 yrs ago because of a shitty doctor who either didn’t give a shit or was one of the worst doctors ever to have a license.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ksmiami: I am talking about debbie’s plan for manipulating genes, not anti-vaxxers.
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie:
Just making “undesirable people” never exist in the first place.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
Why can’t debbie just pie me?
debbie
@Baud:
The tiny graphics make me hungry.
trollhattan
Was all gung ho on the vaccination until I learned it will make me magnetic. Who needs that mess?
Baud
@debbie:
WaterGirl will be quite sad when she learns she’s responsible for the diabetes epidemic among the jackaleriat.
debbie
@Omnes Omnibus:
No. They are currently working on gene manipulation to get rid of sickle cell anemia, and I’m sure you agree that’s a good thing. Why not do the same to get rid of whatever it is in some people that serves them to want to manipulate others?
Baud
@trollhattan:
I got wireless charging capabilities. It’s great. I never have to worry about my phone’s battery when I’m out and about.
WhatsMyNym
deleted
The Comment Box is acting up!
Firefox 89.0, Windows7
Ruckus
@Sister Golden Bear:
Precisely this. Doctors, like everyone else, get used to not seeing things that used to be regular and normal. And they trust what they see, often even more than a non medical person, because they have the education and training but are still human beings. They get into ruts, like everyone else.
This is often the crux of the issue. Knowledge can lead to false assumptions because of the education, almost as easily as it can lead to a reasonable intervention. It’s what we do with an education that’s important, not the paper it’s written on.
trollhattan
@Baud:
Sa-weet!
Do you need to walk under power lines first, or is it sourced from your generally electric personality?
opiejeanne
@germy: Yes. heights are scary. I tend to avoid them too.
At the north rim of the Grand Canyon, we were walking out towards the overlook, and the path was very wide, and I was enjoying the view. “ooh, that’s so big!” And then perspective slammed me to my knees and I could hardly breathe. Meanwhile, our middle child (age 3) was running down the path ahead of mr opiejeanne and her brother, running like this was all a game, and I could do nothing but crawl to a bench beside the path and put my head between my knees. Dave was so busy catching the little stinker that he didn’t get hit by how big it really is until he had scooped her up. The safety rails at the time were not much deterrent for a very determined child that size, but she was fine. Her dad and I were utter wrecks.
I had to fly pretty often for several years and pretty much kept the planes in the air by gripping the armrests for the hour-long flights. There was a height at which I could not look down, but when we were a bit higher I could and I was entertained by trying to figure out exactly where we were (Oakland to Ontario, CA). Now I watch the ground fall away as we take off so that it’s not a shock when we’re about 100 feet up.
opiejeanne
@debbie: I was never able to give myself the weekly shots of Interferon when I was being treated for Hep C, so thank goodness mr opiejeanne would do it for me.
Now I only need a shot once a week of some stuff that’s not insulin and works better. I was a little resistant when my doctor/pharmacist wanted to switch me over to it because I have an aversion to medicines that are marketed aggressively (ask your doctor… etc) This stuff really is a miracle drug, for me at least.
Baud
@trollhattan:
It’s a combination of the magnetism that all vaccinated people have and me living life spinning in circles. Presto, instant induced electric current.
opiejeanne
@Kirk Spencer: I understand the hesitancy among POC, 100%, and it’s not them that I am fussing about. It’s the over-privileged white people that I do not understand.
Then there’s that player on the Washington football team (DC, not Seattle) who, after listening to the expert advisor brought in by management, said he hasn’t had COVID so he sees no reason to get treated for it. Some people, like him, are incapable of understanding this and in his case it may be due to too many blows to the head.
Starfish
@debbie: That would be manipulating a person not for the life or death benefit of that person but for the comfort of others.
That gets into all sorts of bioethical messes.
Choosing that you want to genetically manipulate yourself, fine.
Choosing that you want to genetically manipulate your children, getting dodgy.
Choosing that you want to genetically manipulate others for a personality trait that does not serve you (a stranger), then that gets really dodgy really quickly.
Ashkenazi Jews are prone to certain genetic disorders.
Choosing to cure cystic fibrosis* in yourself is fine.
Choosing to cure cystic fibrosis in your child is probably fine. Without a cure, they are unlikely to live much past their early twenties.
Choosing to genetically manipulate Ashkenazi Jews because someone has beliefs about their personalities built upon anti-Jewish stereotypes would be very bad.
*Cystic fibrosis is a genetic disorder that Ashkenazi Jews are more likely to have than other people. I don’t think we have a cure for cystic fibrosis yet.
Ken
Especially since it also makes you unable to lie, so that you end up calling your cohorts “The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants” and giving the whole thing away.
CaseyL
@opiejeanne: It should make you proud, nothing stupid about that.
I’m also needlephobic – to the point where I dropped out of a Medical Assistant training program because it required phlebotomy – giving rather than getting, but I couldn’t even think about it without hyperventilating.
As a child, I screamed like a banshee.
As an adult, I just breathe deeply and look away.
Ken
I did see an amusing exchange about the “magnetism”. Someone was claiming that they were only magnetic for a little while after they got the shot, then it went away. Response: “When did you wash off the stickum from the band-aid?”
Ken
@opiejeanne: A friend of mine tried the Grand Canyon Skywalk, and had to be led off by his wife while he kept his eyes tightly closed.
debbie
@Starfish:
You don’t mention choosing to eliminate cystic fibrosis worldwide. Do you believe that would be dodgy?
opiejeanne
@Starfish: No, there’s no cure for Cystic fibrosis but there is highly improved understanding and treatment of the disease. Children used to not survive past age 4, back in the 60s, and now people with it live well past 40.
Jay
@Omnes Omnibus:
condoms, vasectomies
Sallycat
Starfish
@debbie: Does it involve genetically manipulating people against their will?
opiejeanne
@CaseyL: They’ve gotten much better at giving injections, and the needles are smaller/finer these days. Phlebotomists use a “baby” needle for my blood draws, one every 3 weeks when I was being treated for Hep C, and the lab I went to had a couple of people highly skilled at not hurting you. I’d rather have my blood drawn than a shot now. Also, I figured out that my left arm is the better place to draw blood, and I don’t interpret the stick as pain as much as I do on the right side.
dmsilev
@Sallycat: A big hospital in Houston told its employees to get vaccinated or get fired, their choice. A bunch sued. Yesterday, a judge tossed the lawsuit, and did not mince words about how stupid he thought it was.
opiejeanne
@Ken: Yeah, no. Neither of us could do that. I hyperventilate whenever an actor stands on the rim of a building.
That thing wasn’t built yet when we were there in July of 1982, thank goodness or the 10 year old would have wanted us to go with him.
debbie
@Starfish:
Are there people who want to cling to their cystic fibrosis?
Starfish
@dmsilev: Nice! I knew that they got rid of the folks. I did not see the lawsuit or the judge’s opinion.
debbie
@dmsilev:
Good news.
Oy, those comments!
TheOtherHank
@geg6: Late to this conversation, but my dad was in the Navy and he was stationed in Taiwan (before Nixon went to China and we had a large military presence on the island) when I was in 4th and 5th grade. Before we moved there, my Mom would pick me up from school on Friday afternoons (for probably a month or so, but it seemed like forever) and take me to the San Diego Navy hospital to get a shot in each arm for all manner of vaccines. I must have been 9 years old and rather than give me a phobia, the constant jabs just made me not care about needles. So based on my sample size of 1, we should take kids in early elementary school and repeatedly inject them until they just don’t care anymore.
StringOnAStick
Doctors are just people, and the time pressures they deal with are real. For 3 years my super active, all muscle husband had a just out of range white blood cell count at his physical. By the third one I told him to bring up that this has been true for two years; the response was he’d probably recently had a virus and that elevated the number but “we’ll check it again in 4 weeks”. In 4 weeks it was still out of range and we got a referral to an oncologist, which sent me to Dr. Google so I was not surprised at the CLL diagnosis but I was still devastated.
The primary care doctor would look at my superfit, active husband and immediately assume nothing was wrong with him, so he was shocked at the diagnosis too. I shouldn’t have been the one who figured it out, but this is one more in my stack of experiences that says we all have to be our own medical advocates and do our research on anything presented to us. Fortunately my husband is at stage zero and genetic testing reveals he has the most “indolent form” meaning it’s possible he’ll never need treatment. It has still taken years for me to see words like “leukemia”, “death” or “widow” and not have my heart clench. Staying active, eating well and sleeping well has dropped his counts to barely out of range; the thing that helped the most was severely restricted carbohydrates including alcohol. People like to make fun of low carbohydrate diets but aside from my husband’s issues, it’s what dropped my cholesterol and triglyceride numbers by 40% to a very healthy range and eliminated the pre diabetes path I was clearly on and had been admonished about by my doctor.
trollhattan
In real estate news, we’ve been dragged into California’s crazy pricing melee here in the metroplex and it’s not uncommon for competing offers to go well above asking price, tens of thousands for some couples we know who have sold recently.
But nothing I’ve hear about has been quite like one of the spouse’s loan clients, who just sold (in two days) their suburban house for two-hundred grand over asking. W the actual F is that about?
Also, too, a lot of purchases are cash offers.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jay: Are you being intentionally obtuse? Genetic manipulation vs birth control? Come the fuck on.
trollhattan
@dmsilev:
That’s a message I heartily endorse. And from a Texas judge, no less.
Ohio Mom
Anyone who thinks one doctor is as interchangeable with another as car oil and lube places are is someone who must not have any chronic or serious conditions — when you are seeing the same doctor every few months, year in and year out, you develop a relationship.
debbie
Parliament just approved the coalition. Buh bye, Bibi!
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: Whoosh!!!
trollhattan
@Baud:
Since 2024 is just around the proverbial corner, my humble suggestion for a campaign slogan:
“Vote Baud 2024, he’s an actual dynamo!”
trollhattan
@debbie:
Good.
I think.
Getting Bibi out of power is excellent news. Evaluating what replaces him I’ll leave to the experts, but gelding Likud is a start.
Ken
@opiejeanne: The one good thing about the Skywalk is that it’s sixty miles from anywhere, so people can’t just go there on a whim, or because the ten-year-old wants to.
germy
Ruckus
@Ohio Mom:
I use the VA. I get a new primary at least once a year, sometimes sooner. I have one specialist doc that I can talk to any time but only because he gave me his cell number. I’d imagine that if one uses an HMO like Kaiser the system is similar, at least it seems like that in my limited exposure through friends.
Another Scott
ctrl-F Russia – not found
ctrl-F Putin – not found
ForeignPolicy – How Russia Sows Confusion in the U.S. Vaccine Debate (from April 2019)
I recognize that we would (and did) have anti-vaccination people and groups long before Putin appeared. But we need to recognize that the on-line world is a perfect platform for foreign actors to sow discord, and they do it with glee.
How big a component of the COVID vaccination problem is it? Dunno. But it needs to be addressed, along with addressing the poverty component with much greater urgency.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
(“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you…”)
Ken
@trollhattan: Careful, maybe he wants to use Dynamo as his superhero (supervillain?) name. Let me check… As I should have expected, already in use, though by multiple publishers – including the Public Domain Superheroes, which I’d not heard of. Interesting…. I think Baud could use it but might have to have the Creative Commons License printed on his spandex.
germy
@trollhattan:
scav
@debbie: HA! Important first step. No doubt will still be messy but whew.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
This is just part of the Creationist war on reality. The Creationist blind sided the paleontologist with their pseudo-scientific nonsense until the paleontologist learned who to call bullshitters on their bullshit. Medicine is just the lasted front on these assholes war on reality and will have the learn the same lesson that their opponents are liars who will refuse to reasoned with.
laura
@trollhattan: I got a cold call about a week ago asking if we’d sell our house. grrr.
Starfish
@StringOnAStick: I think people make fun of low-carb diets because of some of the meat-only extremists. There is also that one weirdo who only eats raw meat. He lives in Kentucky. His name is Derek Nance.
Apparently he did some vandalism and also has some drug charges now. This is not relevant to his dietary choices. I was surprised to learn it.
James E Powell
@trollhattan:
I am wondering whether it’s another bubble. I once thought I could retire to small town California, but now realize the only affordable housing for me in this state is a van down by the river.
Mike in NC
germy
@Mike in NC:
Newest fox news contributor
Geminid
@James E Powell: Well, as you know, there is plenty of cheaper housing in Arizona. And I always thought Albuquerque New Mexico might be a good affordable place to live. Much further east, the Southest Piedmont from Atlanta to Roanoke has some nice towns, and cheaper housing. Plus a decent climate, and plenty of mountains to the west, if you like to hike, camp, or picnic.
James E Powell
@trollhattan:
Isn’t he facing some criminal charges?
JoyceH
Re ‘relationship with doctor’, eh. Doesn’t make no never mind to me. Probably because I’m retired Navy, so my young adult experience was going to sick call and getting whatever doc was working that day. Now I have a name I put down as my ‘primary care physician’, but I haven’t seen her in several years – when I need to go to the doctor I go to the clinic where she works and see whichever doc is working that day. I suppose I could call and say I want to see Doctor Name and make an appointment for when she’s working, but I just don’t bother. I guess you could say I have a ‘relationship’ with my cardiologist, because I always see the same person.
As for vaccine hesitancy, anyone who studies vaccine hesitancy in general would probably be advised to discard data from vaccine hesitancy specific to COVID-19, since this is the only vaccine that I am aware of that has been deliberately politicized by a major political party, so data from that will skew whatever results you’re studying.
satby
Quote up top in post: “don’t conflate the victims of propaganda with the creators of it.”
Just like Fox news addicts, at some point they’re responsible for picking and choosing only the facts that fit their biases. The Venn overlap is probably 100%.
JoyceH
@Geminid:
Recall, though, that regions also have intangible qualities. I live in rural Virginia and my sister and her husband live in rural California – Marin County. Their housing costs are about triple mine.
A few years ago, they came out to visit me, and bro-in-law got one of those freebie mags of real estate listings, and was all astonished at the prices and talked about the possibility of moving out here. Then we were driving out to dinner one evening, and we passed a motorcycle flying a big ol’ honkin’ Confederate flag, and he said, “You know what? I think we’ll stay where we are.”
Starfish
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
The war on medicine rooted in some fringe-y Christian nonsense has been going on for a long time.
There was a moral panic around antibiotics used to treat syphilis. Since sex would not be punished with disease, people would run around and have sex!
There was a moral panic around The Pill. Since sex would not be punished with disease, people would run around and have sex!
There was a moral panic around taking HIV and its treatments also.
There was a moral panic around the HPV vaccine. Since sex would not be punished with disease, people would run around and have sex!
In addition to panicking about kids that might have sex, there was definitely some “HPV vaccine will cause fertility issues” nonsense going on.
That fake panic around fertility issues being caused by a vaccine was also rehashed for the COVID-19 vaccine.
Geminid
@James E Powell: Benjamin Netanyahu’s trial on three counts of corruption began in early April. It has been slow going, with a couple weeks recess during the recent Gaza war. Prosecution witnesses on the first count are still being cross examined. It is thought that between the slow trial pace and appeals, Netanyahu’s criminal case may not be resolved until well into next year.
dexwood
@Geminid: It’s a sellers market in Albuquerque now, too. Prices are rising steadily, listings are gone quickly, and offers above the asking price are common. Three times in the last two weeks we’ve been contacted about selling our unlisted home.
NotMax
OT. Filmic hat trick upcoming today on TCM. All times Eastern.
6 p.m. – The Americanization of Emily
8 p.m. – How to Steal a Million
10:15 p.m. – Topkapi
Bonus for the night owls, Fitzcarraldo at 2:15 a.m.
CaseyL
@JoyceH: I’m slowly coming to same realization about staying here in Seattle. Though New England looks intriguing, and I’m headed out to Maine this fall to check things out a little (yes, I know Maine is GOP, and has ghastly winters). The number of states knocked off my possible post-retirement list due to politics or environmental issues just gets longer and longer.
I weight that against small inconveniences (traffic, traffic, and did I mention traffic?) and minor outrages (people keep dumping discarded furniture near-but-not-in our dumpsters).
matt the somewhat reasonable
I’m not really inclined to let voluntary sloppy-ass consumers of bullshit propaganda off the hook, but I can see why this lady thinks that’s a good approach given her job.
NotMax
Yup. They’re too stupid to be dumb.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@NotMax: Yeah, at some point, stupid is as stupid does.
ian
I am highly dubious that selfishness is a one trick pony that can be genetically sliced off a person. It seems like a combination of multiple genetic factors and upbringing. The amount of ‘testing’ that would need to done to determine what specific genetics affect a much larger broader concept like selfishness make me very queasy.
cain
@dexwood:
I regularly get texts and emails and phone calls about selling my house and there is no way I’m going to do it. First off, my house is paid for, and I’m still thinking I should just keep the house around in case of financial disaster – secondly, if I were to sell there is no way I’m going to give it to someone who will turn it into a rental. My house is kind of the perfect type of house for a rental. But honestly it’s a great place for an older couple who wants to downsize.
ETA: #100? This sunday is getting better all the time! ALL THE TIME! Yeeha!!!!
cain
@CaseyL:
On the other hand, more liberals moving into these areas is good – so that we can flip the state. There are more of us then them and we tend to be concentrated in blue states, branching out and moving to others is a good thing so that we can create more equitable political dynamic – and steer the GOP from the crazy.
Roger Moore
@StringOnAStick:
I think a huge problem is that our medical system is not really a system. It’s a bunch of separate parts that don’t talk to each other very well, which lets a lot of stuff slip through the cracks. Chronic problems get missed because a patient sees different doctors every year for their physical, or because their doctor doesn’t remember their previous physical and doesn’t bother checking the chart when something is a bit out of the ordinary.
Similarly, we don’t have good medical histories that follow us wherever we go. So a patient who has a diagnosed but rare condition (like the sickle cell Ruckus mentioned) has to convince each successive doctor that it’s real to be taken seriously. And that’s assuming it’s a condition that’s generally accepted. Heaven help you if you have something like fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue, that a large chunk of the medical establishment refuses to accept as real things.
Geminid
@JoyceH: The political climate certainly can condition one’s feelings about a new home. But Georgia and North Carolina are purple states, and the cities and towns like Roanoke and Brevard, North Carolina tend to be blue.
Rural areas are a different story. I am confortable living in a “red” rural Virginia county, and it doesn’t bother me, perhaps because Democrats are in control of Virginia. But anyone looking for a place to retire would do well to avoid a rural home anyway, unless they wanted to do some small scale farming.
They would have plenty of company if they did. There was a wave of urban and suburban people moving “back to the land” in the 1970s. A second wave seems to have developed this past decade, what with portable jobs, portable wealth, and early retirements. I see people like this moving into rural central Virginia, although more buy Charlottesville condos . I have a friend in Cortland County New York who has also seen an influx of new people, especially near Ithaca. He calls these people “yuppiebillies.” Some are setting up small farms. But you really have to want it to get into small scale farming as more than a good hobby.
Fair Economist
@James E Powell:
It’s just starting to be a bubble. Until about 2 years ago, puchase prices were fully justified by rent prices, meaning the real problem is the desperate shortage of housing caused mostly by the extreme limitations on multi-family housing in this country. About 2 years ago purchase prices started climbing above rental prices and this last year they’ve really taken off. All the same, it could be years before the bubble bursts, like last time.
The legislature of California is considering a number of provisions that might make a substantial dent in the housing shortage, and possible deflate the bubble in the process.
Roger Moore
@Ruckus:
I can’t speak for other systems, but Kaiser assigns everyone a primary physician they’re supposed to deal with for routine matters like physicals, and you stick with one for the long term. You’ll change doctors if they leave Kaiser or you move and switch which local branch you visit, but otherwise they will do their best to keep you with the same doctor. If you need to see a doctor urgently, you’ll get sent to whomever is available, but that’s going to be true in any system. Even if you do get sent to an unfamiliar doctor, at least they’ll have good access to your medical history; Kaiser is very good about keeping track of everything you’ve ever done in their system.
Geminid
@JoyceH: The political climate certainly can condition one’s feelings about a new home. But Georgia and North Carolina are purple states, and the cities and towns like Roanoke and Brevard, North Carolina tend to be blue.
Rural areas are a different story. I live in a “red” rural Virginia county, and it doesn’t bother me at all, perhaps because Democrats are in control of Virginia. But anyone looking for a place to retire would do well to avoid a rural home anyway, unless they wanted to do some small scale farming.
They would have plenty of company if they did. There was a wave of urban and suburban people moving “back to the land” in the 1970s. A second wave seems to have developed this past decade, what with portable jobs, portable wealth, and early retirements. I see people like this moving into rural central Virginia, although more buy Charlottesville condos . I have a friend in Cortland County New York who has also seen an influx of new people, especially near Ithaca. He calls these people “yuppiebillies.” Some are setting up small farms. But you really have to want it to get into small scale farming as more than a good hobby.
Uncle Cosmo
Because medical science has no fucking clue as to which genes, or indeed if any genes at all (as opposed to environment, history, and/or childhood) are associated with that behavior – much less how to alter them in any constructive way.
SATSQ – where the second “s” stands for stupid.
JoyceH
@Roger Moore:
When I was in the Navy, your Medical Record was just that – a fat battered old folder that followed you from duty station to duty station. (I suspect these days it’s all Done With Computers). Every time you went to the doctor for a cold or acid reflux, that created another piece of paper that got hole-punched and stuck into the folder.
Obvious Russian Troll
@dexwood: In Toronto we’ve gotten at least half a dozen fliers from real estate agents every week since we moved into our current place in 2018. In the before times we also got the occasional door-to-door real estate agent asking if we were interested in selling, but that’s one thing I haven’t missed.
david
@dmsilev: I’m sure employers won’t use this new, enhanced, and now judicially-approved power over its workers in the future, with unforeseen ramifications.
Cheer now; rue the future.
Roger Moore
@StringOnAStick:
I think there are two really important things to understand about diets:
Citizen Alan
@Omnes Omnibus: Does this mean that you support laws preventing women from having abortions because the foetus suffers from severe disabilities??
Citizen Alan
@satby: I can absolutely blame people who choose to believe preposterous lies because those lies are things such people desperately want to believe our true.
Chris Johnson
Vaccines: A Measured Response (HBomberguy)
or in summary:
It was a scam from the very beginning, based on outright fraud from a guy who started out wanting to do anything necessary to fake objections to the MMR vaccine to SELL HIS OWN COMPETING VACCINES.
trollhattan
@James E Powell:
Yes, and I don’t think that has changed.
Funny how often it seemed when Bibi’s coalition was on the brink of collapse or the Law was closing in on him, he’d manage to start another ruckus with Hamas. Bet folks there would like a break from that.
trollhattan
@laura:
Did you see that come Thursday, the weather gun is set to kill? 109? That’s the day I’d take that call “Get me outta here!”
Omnes Omnibus
@Citizen Alan: Nice try. No. I don’t believe anyone should force a women to give birth against her will, and I don’t believe any further inquiry is necessary.
prostratedragon
@JoyceH: Many hospitals now use a system called MyChart. It seems to operate as a kind of consortium, so that it’s easy to share data at the patient’s request. Moving from UMich hospital to Nwestern was as easy as a few minutes online, after which the new place had everything going back several years. I can see all recorded test results, etc., whenever I wish.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
As I’ve stated I see a lot of different docs at the VA. But the one unifying thing is the medical records. All the docs have access to one computerized medical record. There are pages that show my entire history of say blood pressure measurements, highs, lows, averages. They can see a long history of every measurement, every test, every opinion. Progress, positive or negative. As long as the doc isn’t an asshole (actually not many of those, they don’t last long) the big thing in theory of having the same doc is that they know your history. Except that they see too many people to really know it and memorize it, and they don’t. At the VA they don’t even have to try. So if you see as many docs as I’ve seen in the last decade or more, you realize that immediate knowledge is the key, as long as basic competence is at hand, everything else is in the record.
JoyceH
@prostratedragon: Yeah, we have a system like that here. The local hospital is Mary Washington, and most of the specialists and what-not in the region seem to be tied in to the Mary Washington system, so all the stuff feeds into that. I seem to be seeing a lot of specialists lately…
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
I assumed that they did assign one primary, the VA does as well, it’s just that I’ve had some retire, some move on and some move up from being a primary. And it’s happened often enough that the longest I’ve had one has been just under 2 yrs. I’ve also moved clinics and that starts you over in the primary system there. I had one retire and it was months before a replacement so I had to just wait for one of the other regulars to have an opening. Nothing is perfect but overall I’ve been pretty happy about my care. I’ve known people who used Kaiser and they seemed, if they accepted the concept, to like the care.
Gvg
@david: Employers have had this power for decades. Schools too. Not all of them have chosen to use the power, but hospitals and medical practices sure have. Any medical employee that didn’t EXPECT this requirement is living in fantasy land. Schools will mostly be following thru to.
I had to get updated vaccinations for something when I went to College in the 90’s because my shot was an early one that had turned out to not be strong enough, and younger children had gotten a revised vaccine, so I had to too. I went to college late, so I was out of step on shots. Point is, this has been routine for longer than most of these employees have been alive.
Personally if I worked for a hospital, I would not want to call that kind of attention to myself from my bosses by taking such a stupid position. I think they have hurt their promotion prospects.